Hangover days

Light pouring in through the window always wakes me up. Granted, it’s been pouring in for about five hours now, but it takes a while for my reptilian brain to really notice anything quickly. Especially when I’ve been out drinking.

I try desperately not to have to wake up. Even the most vicious of drinkenings doesn’t leave me with much of a hangover, but what there is frightens me. I have half an hour or so to kill before I can safely open my eyes and that feeling of breathing through an atmosphere of grease leaves me.

While waiting I try to piece together the happenings of last night, usually a futile effort but one that keeps me occupied. Eventually I feel sane enough to open my eyes and arise from my razor-thin foam mattress.

There’s never much food around so I settle for a glass of water and watch some cartoon I’ve seen a hundred thousand times already. Having done that I try desperately to wash some of the feck off and hit the road.

My usual routine is at this point to go to the house of a man called The Reverend and try to draw some comics, but sometimes I wander further afield. In all cases this involves a fairly substantial amount of walking along train lines and other kinds of government infrastructure. I stop to watch trains go past.

On a good day it’s about two in the afternoon by the time I’m walking. On a bad day it’s much earlier. But we’ll stick to the good day. Often on my hikes I encounter other weirdos who don’t own cars. These people are often good for conversation if they happen to be heading in the direction I’m going, and sometimes for impromptu drinkenings if they happen to be alcoholics also. These people are a rich source of data, especially as I don’t spend any time at all talking to any other people who I’ve known for less than five years.

When I eventually get to where I’m going, there’s usually some comic drawing and a lot of swearing. We work on the comic for a few hours, watch another cartoon or show for the hundredth time and I walk back to where I come from. By this time the sun has set, which makes walking a lot easier as I move faster in the cold.

Back at the abode, I roll out my mattress in the room I occupy and try to get some reading done. This doesn’t usually work, so I get up, put on some music and ride the Internets for a while. Usually one of my friends wants to bounce emails back and forwards, so I indulge her. This is usually when I draw something or paint nerd miniatures. At some point I get up and cook some two minute noodles.

After a couple of hours of this, I usually get a call or text message informing me of doings transpiring somewhere or other. I wash the paint off my hands and hit the road for some more drinking. If this doesn’t happen I’ll sit on the computer for most of the night, drinking beer and water to cut down the hunger. Sometimes I’m out of food, but I’m always too lazy to cook it anyway. Anything much harder than two-minute noodles and I won’t bother to make it just for myself.

I’ll either stumble back from where I was drinking, following the train lines as usual, or my head thumps onto the back of the chair I just fell asleep in. These are clear signs that it is nearly time to go to bed. I put on a Japanese cartoon or read a chunk of a reasonably silly book to take the edge off my alertness, and pass out on the mattress in the corner of the study ready for another important and fulfilling hangover.